


New Fears

by EarthsickWithoutYou



Category: The OA (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 11:29:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13950627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthsickWithoutYou/pseuds/EarthsickWithoutYou
Summary: Hap wants to take a photo of the markings on OA's back, but their feelings for each other quickly make this a very complicated and confusing endeavor.





	New Fears

“I need you to take your shirt off, please,” Hap instructs OA, leading her to the middle of his bedroom and then stepping back. She feels her cheeks immediately starting to burn and fixes Hap with an angry stare.

“What? No.” Of course not. 

“Please, you have to. I know that you and Homer—” Ah, there it is again. “Ho-mer” is just two syllables, but Hap can’t force himself through them without his voice digging poisonous claws into the name. At the familiar sound of his furious jealousy towards Homer and the sight of the same emotions flickering unmistakably across his face, OA smiles. Hap sees this flash of triumph and his jaw clenches. “I know that you both created markings on your backs, and that they have something to do with what you learned from your NDE’s, so I need the images for my research.”

“I don’t care what you need,” She informs him rather obviously. Now he’s fighting to maintain composure because he doesn’t want to lose his temper with her. That would be weak, beneath him. Vulnerable. OA wishes he would be that way with her, just once.

Pride takes over and he replies, “No, but you care about the others. You wouldn’t want them to suffer for your defiance.” She flinches in bitter resentment at his threat and Hap looks like he wishes he could take it back. “Listen,” he adds in a softer tone, beseeching, “I won’t look at you, I swear, I mean, I only need one picture of your back and that’s it.”

“Why did you bring me in _here_?” OA inquires, crossing her arms. 

“I know this is a sensitive thing to ask of you, so I thought you’d be more comfortable in here,” he explains. “It’s secluded, a relaxing environment…”

First of all, what a joke. As if Hap ever relaxed. What the hell did he know about it?

“Well, you thought wrong. I’m not _comfortable_ in a room with you and a bed in it.” OA speaks the words knowing they’ll hit him like a hard slap in the face and is rewarded by the sad defeat in his bright blue gaze before it crashes helplessly away from her and hits the floor.

 _Truth is, I’m not comfortable with this because all I can think about is you pushing me down on that bed and holding me down so that you can—_ OA squeezes her eyes shut but the passionate, forbidden images of Hap kissing her, touching her body, fucking her, they won’t go away. They’re somehow seared into her very being at its remotest inner function. 

Like everything else about her life now, there’s no escape from her well-hidden, illicit feelings for her captor.

“Fine, then let’s just get this over with,” Hap suggests, lifting his camera as if to show that getting a picture is truly his only motive.

“Fine,” OA snaps, turning away from him and whipping her shirt over her head so that she’s standing there in just her bra and the dress she’s been wearing as a skirt lately, shoved down so that it rests just above her hips. 

She can feel the heat of his eyes on her, the power of the way he wants her, and it has the same dizzying effect on her as always. It’s wrong, but she’s glad he desires her. In her darkest moments of introspection, she admits to herself that she wants him, too. Slowly, she reaches back and unclasps the bra, letting the cups fall into her fingers before she places it on the bed on top of her shirt. Trying hard to conceal what this exposure really means to her, OA covers her breasts with her hands and stands there wondering why she doesn’t hear the camera clicking.

Instead, there’s a sharp intake of breath from Hap as he sees her fresh scars for the first time up close. “God, Prairie, why would you do this to yourself?” He rushes forward instinctively and then his hand hovers very close to her skin, moving over the markings she’s cut into herself as if he thinks if he makes physical contact, she will turn and attack him. 

Instead of answering his question, she says, simply and bluntly, “You can touch them. I know how dedicated you are to your work, so I’m sure you’ll want to record every single detail.” 

Hap doesn’t reply right away, but as his fingers land on her bare back, right at the sensitive spot where her bra was fastened, he sighs deeply. OA closes her eyes with the immediate pleasure of his touch on her naked flesh. It’s not just the fact that Hap is the only person who’s touched her in years. Instead, it has more to do with something she noticed almost immediately after meeting him, before she knew he had nefarious plans for her. 

It feels so fucking good when Hap touches her, and that's why she lets him get away with it all the time. This is it, OA’s dirty little secret. Or one of them, anyway. When it comes to this man, she might have thousands trapped in her soul, whispering, conspiring against her better judgement.

“This must have hurt so badly,” he continues huskily, “And you’ve marked your…” His whole hand rubs across her skin almost like a massage and her breath catches in her throat as a sweet hotness spreads in her core. 

Still, she has to shake that off and maintain cold indifference, so she peeks at his handsome, attentive, worried face over her shoulder and demands, “What? Finish what you’re saying.” 

She needs to know; she needs his words, the way they reassure her of his high regard for her; the way they show her his love even when he tries to keep the language purely professional or even menacing. Somehow, OA needs to hear that intelligent voice, low and gravely, shaking with feeling as it so often does in her presence, to know she’s still alive.

Hap speaks the words quietly, well aware that they are highly inappropriate. “You’ve scarred your beautiful skin,” he elaborates miserably. “This is my fault.”

“Of course it is. I wouldn’t need to record information from the other side of death if it weren’t for you. My friends and I wouldn’t be resorting to crazy extremes to get away if you hadn’t forced us to need impossible solutions.”

“You won’t get away,” Hap assures her in a panic, brows knitted above his glasses. “You can’t get away. Not ever.”

“Okay, then _let_ us go,” she proposes in aggravation. “End this nightmare. I know it can’t be making you happy.”

“It’s not.” He’s sullen, lost in thought, but for a mere few second before he snaps back to his regular mindset. “But I’ve come too far to go back now. My life, my personal integrity, they’ve already been laid at the altar of this work. There’s no normal existence for me anymore, and if I let you all go now, it will have been for nothing.”

This makes OA so mad that she spins around without even caring that she’s half-naked. “How fucking dare you,” she demands, jabbing a finger into his chest as she stares at his ever-blazing eyes in disbelief. “How dare you put yourself ahead of everything else. What _you’ve_ sacrificed, what _you_ need to learn, it’s disgusting! What about the lives you’ve stolen? What about Rachel and Scott and Homer?” Hap’s chin drops down and he shakes his head. 

“What about me?” she asks fiercely, prompting him to look at her again. Her shaking finger remains firmly pressed to his black button-down shirt, and Hap stares down at it for a beat before he grabs her wrist.

Their eyes bore into each other for several more deep breaths and savage heartbeats before she notices his gaze shifting for just a tiny moment, looking at her bare breasts long enough for his cheeks to become flushed. “Did you just look at my body?” OA asks disbelievingly.

She expects him to apologize, drop her hand and get back to his usual attitude of tormented torturer, but instead, he nods boldly, then gulps. 

“Do you want me to apologize?” Hap asks, using his hold on her wrist to pull her closer until it’s just her elbow that separates them, her arm pressing between her stiff nipples and the fast breath in Hap’s chest and stomach.

“No,” OA says frankly. The honesty feels amazing; she has to admit that much to herself.

“I like the way you challenge me,” Hap says. “Do you like the way I challenge you?”

OA thinks about going back to lying but then she gives a small nod. He has the power to compel the truth in her, but only when he goes about it just the right way, with his walls about to come down.

His lips are perfectly shaped and so very kissable, something OA noticed the first time she saw his face. She remembers that day, when she was prone and defenseless in his bed, looking up into his gorgeous, delusional, destructive face. When his voice melted over her like poisoned honey, telling her he couldn’t let her go, she’d longed to reach up and run her fingertips over his soft brown hair, then let them trace his face until it fell into her palm.

OA thinks about kissing his lips now, and it probably shows in her face. Hap’s arm snakes around her waist and his fingers graze the wounds again. “Do they hurt?” He asks haltingly.

“They still sting,” OA admits. “Doing it hurt like hell.”

“I bet,” Hap answers disapprovingly, upset with her for harming herself.

“I’ll always be damaged goods now, so why shouldn’t it show? Why _shouldn’t_ it make me…less beautiful?” OA nearly spits the words because she is offended by his comment that she’s marked her once-attractive skin, the implication being that she’s ruined herself. Maybe her feelings are hurt that he doesn’t see her as being quite as lovely as she once was, which is absurd on her part.

“That’s not what I meant,” Hap says, turning her around with a simple motion of his hands until she pivots at his unspoken command. 

“Well, then what did you mean?” She rolls her eyes, impatient with his little games.

He’s not playing games anymore, though, and she knows that as soon as his burning lips press to one of the scars on her back. An ecstatic moan breaks from her mouth before she can hold it back, her eyes closing as this sound encourages him to keep going until he’s kissed each mark slowly in turn. “You’ll always be beautiful. Nothing could change that. Even I could never ruin you, Prairie, not with your strength and your integrity. You should know that about yourself.”

She shouldn’t feel like this. Dreamy, pulled under into his current. Hap’s breath tickles, and there’s a pink sand beach where her common sense once lived, grains of endless sparkles neatly piled, visions of happiness between them filling her mind until reality evaporates.

He faces her again, and she sighs with a slight shiver, crossing her arms. It’s actually a little cold; it’s summer and he has the A.C. on. “You don’t have to look at me like that,” OA insists, but her voice has gone all soft and drifting, still lost on some taboo oasis with him. “Astonished, like I’m this delicate treasure.”

“I can’t, uh…” Hap is desperately analyzing her expressions, her movements, trying to decide how to act, what to do, and he can’t piece it together. She knows it’s impossible for him to understand how much she cares for him, and can even identify with the bewilderment. Why _does_ she love him so? It’s everything, OA realizes; the sad empty space between the good man he could be and the bad one he’s making himself play the role of. The hurt and the heartbreak in his eyes and demeanor, the shame and self-hatred racking him. Perhaps most of all though, it’s the real Hap as he is at his best, like that first day at the oyster bar. _It didn’t have to be like this._

He’s charming, sweet, attentive, funny, brilliant. The way he can’t resist the unanswerable questions is fascinating and often adorably geeky. And Hap's deep, unrelenting _need_ to understand the inner workings of existence and follow it out into the unknown is an instinct with which she feels a kindred sensation that has, from the beginning, bonded them. Within that bond, and the pull between their hearts, she’s not so much trapped as… _held_ , as if in an embrace. As if that’s where she fits, where she belongs.

Hap shakes his head. “I’m not usually quite this inarticulate, Prairie, but…I think what I mean to say is I can’t help looking at you that way. I’ve known you for years, and putting aside right, wrong, every consideration that’s screaming to me that I have no right to feel even a tiny percentage of what I do for you…I can’t get over it, over you. I’ve been trying, and frankly, it’s embarrassingly unachievable.”

“Putting aside right and wrong…that’s a habit of yours.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What if…if I said that I understand how you feel when it comes to me, and that the reason _why_ I do is that I have a similar conflict about you?” From dejected, his face shifts to amazement as his shining eyes take her in. OA adds, because she’s gone too far to stop now, “It’s the same conflict.” She shivers again, and this time he steps forward, hands stretching out to comfort her.

“You’re cold,” he says, voice hoarse with concern and longing, careful as his hands rest on her arms, then rub up and down to warm her. She tips forward, headlong into the hurricane, resting her face against his upper chest as his arms encircle her, and it’s wonderful. Hap’s been out into the heat recently, she can tell by how his shirt sticks slightly to his skin, the natural, earthy, manly smell of him blending with a beguiling hint of spicy, piney aftershave and…something else. If she had to guess, a mix of basil and citrus?

“You were out in the garden earlier,” OA concludes, burrowing deeper into him, her nose tingling pleasantly and her cheeks turning pink with the soft, lovely friction of moving against him. His heart is pounding and she has the nerve and the will now to claim the sound as her own.

“Yes, I…I’ve been daydreaming about bringing you out there, showing you what I’ve been working on. I have all kinds of herbs now, and carrots…um…” Hap’s breath catches as OA kisses his chest through the shirt. “I have a lemon tree, and I planted flowers for you, Prairie.”

“Beautiful things to make up for the ugly,” she surmises quietly and he nods, lost in her eyes as she cranes her head back just enough to see his face. “Before I knew you, I didn’t know one person could be so complicated. But now, I think I can see the universes inside you, changing you, shifting. It makes me want so badly…it’s stupid.”

“No, it’s not,” Hap insists, hanging on her words.

“I wish you cared enough about me to give in, love me. It’s foolish of me, I know. A young girl’s fantasy, when I _need_ to be older than those wishes, hard and strong. Too covered in armor to come undone like I still do when you give me that look.” OA’s voice trembles like petals falling open, slicked with dewdrops, vulnerable and open to the sunlight. The words slide too easily from her tongue.

“I just thought it you’d never care for me in return, and I understood. But if you could believe in me, I’d change for you, I’d do anything.” He gathers her hands and caresses them, a wistful light falling over his expression that squeezes her heart.

“It’s not about changing," OA elaborates, "it’s about being who you truly are, letting go of all the fear, insecurity, and misguided selfishness that brought you to what you’ve been these past few years.”

“There’s the fear I had before, of never knowing the truth, of being useless, just a blip on the radar who never accomplished anything real, important — I don’t care about profit or fanfare, but I couldn’t leave the world no better than I came into it. Especially when the world is a fucking nightmare, but…even those seem like shallow concerns now. I have these new fears now, fears about you, Prairie, and I carry them with me every day. I didn’t know I could love someone like this, constantly obsessing about seeing you, finding excuses to touch you. So afraid you’ll hate me forever, so terrified that in all of my endeavors to protect you, somehow you might get hurt…what if one day you don’t wake up, don’t come back to me? _I’d_ die.” He's so sure, the conviction written plainly across him.

“Hap,” OA cuts in, smoothing out the wrinkles in his shirt, her palms relishing the sensation of his broad, hot chest beneath, his breaths making it rise and fall quickly.

“No, let me say this," he continues, so intensely. "You cut yourself because I locked you up. That’s the truth, Prairie, it’s my fault, my doing. And if you’d cut too deeply, and I didn’t see you in time to help? What do you think I would have done to myself?” She runs one hand over his cheek and his eyes shut, his tense posture relaxing just a bit.

“Kiss me,” she asks thickly. 

He leans down to close the space between their faces and gives her a gently yearning kiss that only spreads her lips a little, though the taste of his mouth and the tentative, restrained sweep of his tongue make OA’s spine tingle.

“‘Better to be slapped with the truth than kissed with a lie,’” she murmurs into his mouth. “Russian proverb.” There’s a certain cleverly wry humor they both tend to enjoy which makes him smile in return.

“‘A kick to the teeth is good for some,’” he replies smoothly, and she chuckles in immediate recognition.

“‘A kiss with a fist is better than none,’” they say in unison as she grins.

“Florence and the Machine,” OA adds as he nods. “Do you want to kiss me like _that_ , like you just did, as if I’m a porcelain statue? Or do you want to kiss me and hold me in your arms like the world’s crumbling around us and we’re all we have to cling to? Who cares if we break and fade away into the wind if it’s beautiful? Don’t lie to me and maybe I won’t slap, kick, or punch you, Hap. Just maybe I’ll kiss back.”

“Prairie,” Hap exhales roughly, his arms tightening around her waist as his lips still linger tantalizingly near to hers. He's all the morphine soaking her fever dream. 

“OA,” she confides, blowing the name at his face like a kiss. Leaning up, perfectly angled to brush their mouths together, she just barely lets it happen as she repeats, “Say it. That’s my name now, not Prairie.”

Hap registers his jolt at the revelation internally, only the shadow of momentary confusion ghosting his eyes before he says intently, “OA.” Then he grabs her, hoisting her legs up around his hips as her arms encircle his neck and he kisses her hungrily, holding nothing back. They stay there for a dizzyingly unreasonable amount of time, Hap simply adjusting his fierce grip on OA’s body whenever she slides downward, OA meeting him kiss for kiss as their tongues tangle. She can taste the mint cloaking the nicotine in his mouth, every one of his bad habits exposed, the ones she can easily guess and the ones she’s imagined with half-suppressed reaches, like wondering if he touches himself in bed thinking of her. 

_Maybe I’ll ask him sometime._

Her skin is cool, he notices, and Hap lays her down on the bed, pulling the sheets down and placing her inside them before he joins her. “We can get you warmer,” Hap promises, threading their fingers together, nipping at her bottom lip enticingly.

OA forgets what it’s like to be cold, hurriedly relieving Hap of his glasses, then his clothing and kissing him all over his hard, scrumptious body, offered up to her like an implicit gift, a promise of devotion she won’t waste time before taking as her own. 

He does what he’s been thinking about since she took her shirt off and cups her breasts, squeezing them and hissing in arousal at the feeling of her hard nipples. Hap turns OA onto her back and slides his mouth firmly, demandingly down her neck, then licks circles around her nipples before biting them. A long, pleading whimper escapes her lips and she scrambles out of her dress. Grabbing his hands and placing them on her panties, OA smiles in sweet surrender as he removes them teasingly, too gradually. The waiting hurts so good it could make her cry. As it is, she gulps and touches his hair, runs her fingers through it as he parts her legs and kisses her pussy with the same unrestrained enjoyment he showed her mouth. Soon, Hap's alternating the amount of pressure and depth with which his tongue explores her, making it clear that he has the rather insistent, very well-executed goal of hearing her moan out his name.

OA’s hips rock upward as the devastating orgasm hits, the sound she makes causing him to growl with reciprocal satisfaction as he watches her face absorb the rolling waves of euphoria still coasting through her. Hap rises up to her stomach, lavishing it with messy, open-mouthed kisses as her fingers ensure that his hair is ruffled into a disarray as well.

“Are you happy?” Hap asks, and she nods without thinking twice. “I can make you happier,” he determines, spurred on. “Do you want me to keep going?”

“It’s all I want,” OA sighs, joy mingling with a mournful fear that this may be both their first and last time.

_A new fear…_

Hap glides his cock inside her so easily, groaning with instant disbelief at her tight exquisiteness as it squeezes his thick, stiff length. He attempts to continue playing with her breathless expectations, pumping in and out too slowly, only going all the way every few times until the fullness makes her moan, scratching his back. But this won’t do, so she takes his thumb into her mouth and sucks it hard, then licks and bites it before repeating the procedure. He shoots her an accusing look at the mischief she’s undertaken to encourage him to give her more of himself, then smiles wickedly, thrusting hard into her until her ass slides up against the mattress and she has to lock her legs around him to steady herself. 

“Fuck,” OA cries jaggedly, pieces falling apart in his eyes as they darken with erotic intent. “Yes, just like that.”

Hap is nothing but obedient now, his wet gasp hitting her shoulder as he rests his head there, fucking her with steadily increasing speed and absolutely no further deprivation of his full length. “Just like that?” His whisper grazes her ear and she lifts her hips in time with his rhythm.

“Yes,” she repeats, in a trance, her body clenching around his cock as she gets closer to coming, as the way _Hap_ can make her feel — just him, and no one else — is taking her over and blotting out every single other concern. She’s fairly sure, in her dazed state of real-life dreaming, that she says “yes” many more times, especially loudly as her hips jerk up and he pounds into her, their orgasms unifying them just as everything else suddenly seems to be doing. Perhaps it’s simply the disappearance of the lies between them, honesty bringing a lantern into the blackness until the future seems not like an imposing threat, but a welcome and delightful world of endless possibility.

They cling together with all the strength they have left, still weakly exchanging fluttery kisses, until their breathing returns to something approaching a normal depth and speed. “What are we going to do, Hap?” OA asks the question in a voice that fades in and out, in time with her myriad of conflicting feelings on the subject.

“I don’t know. I just love you.” Hap brushes her hair from her face, tender with her now as he concentrates on her question, fighting just as hard to find the answers. “God, there’s so much I don’t know, OA. Where did you get that name, what does it mean? It doesn’t seem to matter so much now. It’s _you_ and that much I can feel in my bones.” He opens his mouth impulsively but stops before speaking, making OA quirk an eyebrow.

“What? Come on, tell me.” She urges it with concerned solicitude which before today, she never would have admitted to feeling for her captor. But _oh_ , how she loves pulling him from his shell. 

“Marry me,” Hap suggests, trembling with some magical romantic adrenaline, getting all worked up into one of his hyper-emotional fervors. 

“Hmm,” OA muses, irresistibly charmed by the reckless suggestion. “Maybe. Someday. When you’ve righted things, made amends.”

“You think that’s all possible?” He’s eager to grab onto the ambition, find a way to make it happen. 

“I don’t know,” she admits softly, sliding up against him and kissing his lips. “But you can try. I’ll help you. First, Hap…” It’s her turn to look a bit shy, and to catch his inquisitiveness.

“What is it?” Hap is hers now, marked by her mouth so many times already, claimed and given. She can do with him what she will.

“Show me the garden,” OA smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title taken from the song "New Fears" by Lights


End file.
